Chapter 3: The Red, the Blue, and the Gray
The Outbreak of the Second American Civil War
On March 22nd, 1937, the guns began to ring out across the United States and hundreds of thousands of Americans advanced against their former countrymen, as the Consolidated States of America, the American Union State, and the United States of America officially began the Second American Civil War. All three sides, though not lacking manpower due to the large number of enthusiastic volunteers, instituted limited conscription as a precautionary measure, and the United States began ordering its overseas garrisons in China and the Panama Canal Zone home. Yet just as in the First American Civil War, the Second would not be fought by Americans alone and attracted significant foreign attention and manpower.
All three sides of the war had the backing of foreign powers, and tens of thousands of independent volunteers had slipped into the country before the war had officially begun. Around the world, Syndicalists who believed in global revolution had travelled far to help the Consolidated Syndicates of America topple the Federal government and defeat the authoritarian Huey Long. The Union of Britain, French Commune, Italian Socialist Republic, Syndicalist Chile, Syndicalist Centroamerica, and the Bharatiya Commune sent organized divisions, military advisors, and equipment to their American counterparts, while self-organized Syndicalists from countries like Spain, Mexico, Austria-Hungary, Poland, Ireland, Germany, Norway, Argentina, Brazil and Russia travelled at their own expense, and often under the threat of arrest from their own governments for doing so, to fight on behalf of the CSA. Famous International units such as the British Tarenni Column, the French
Corps Lafayette, the Italian
Corpo Garibaldi, the Irish Connolly Column, the German
Thälmann-Kolonne, and others would soon make a name for themselves fighting for the revolution in America.
Pictured: Irish Syndicalist Connolly Column on the Pennsylvania Front, 1937.
Pictured: British Tarenni Column on the Kentucky Front, 1937.
Pictured: Italian Syndicalist Corpo Garibaldi on the Pennsylvania Front, 1937.
Pictured: French Syndicalist Corps Lafayette on the Pennsylvania Front, 1937.
In the American Union State, The German
Legion Schwarzer Adler arrived in New Orleans in the weeks before the beginning of the war, along with military advisors and equipment for the Minutemen units mustering. The Kaiser had seen the United States as a potential threat to Germany due to its financial and material support for the Entente during the Weltkrieg, and saw the Second Civil War as a chance to get revenge. Integralist Brazil’s
Legião Verde and several Cossack Divisions from Savinkovist Russia arrived to help the AUS bring down the Federal government and stamp out the American Syndicalists as well. Other individual volunteers, without their government’s backing, also traveled to the US before the war started to help fight for the right. Opposing their Syndicalist countrymen and their government’s clandestine support for the Federal government, Ireland’s National Populist Blueshirts sent a brigade of volunteers, mostly veterans of the Irish Revolution, to help the AUS. The foreign volunteers fighting for the AUS, though tough fighters, were small in number compared to those that came to fight for the CSA or the Federal government (with the notable exception of the Russian Cossack units who numbered 30,000 strong at the start of the war.)
Pictured: German Legion Schwarzer Adler Infantry on the Missouri Front, 1937.
Pictured: German Me-109 Flying over Kentucky, 1937.
Pictured: Officers of the Russian Cossack Divisions on the Missouri Front, 1937.
The US itself had received the unofficial backing of the Entente even before the war began, with Canadian intelligence offering advice to President Olson about how to deal with Syndicalist uprising, though the support fell short of organized units being sent to help with the war effort, as the Entente’s member-states were still growing their forces and preparing for the war in Europe to retake their homelands. The US did, however, receive military advisors and some material support from the Entente, as well as individual volunteers who crossed the border from Canada to fight alongside New England and New York units, or who arrived in San Francisco from Australasia to fight beside Californian volunteers. Mexican President Juan Andreu Alamazán, disturbed by AUS oppression against Tejanos who had backed the Federal government, was one of the few world leaders to send an organized fighting force to back the United States. The Mexican
División Águila crossed the Rio Grande into El Paso just days after the conflict officially began. Ireland’s President Michael Collins, despite some of his countrymen deciding to back the two rebel factions, ordered ten thousand men of the IRA to fight for the United States, though to avoid angering his German allies, he had them do so secretly as members of the US armed forces’ newly reinstated Irish Brigades (a division strength formation) as private volunteers. The Japanese too, backed the Federal government and sent two divisions of Imperial Marines to San Francisco, as well as several shipments worth of rifles, machine guns, and artillery guns (though this was not because the Japanese government supported democracy, but instead as a way to sooth US anger over their seizure of Guam and Wake Island the day the Civil War broke out in the name of “preventing instability in the Pacific.”)
Pictured: Mexican División Águila on the New Mexico Front, 1937.
Pictured: Japanese Imperial Marines on the New Mexico Front, 1937.
With hostilities commencing as the deadline was reached,
War Plan Blue officially swung into action. It had not been entirely accurate in assuming how the war would be reached, (it had assumed Minnesota and Tennessee would stay with the Federal government, while New Jersey and Southern Texas would back the rebels) but it was remarkably close to what had actually happened and put the United States in a good position at the start of the war. The Syndicalists were suffering from disorganization and internal rivalries between their various factions, especially the Federalists (Radical Socialists), and sometimes even the Unionist (Orthodox Syndicalists) whose units demanded that they be allowed to vote on any orders they received from higher ups. This was especially true on the Eastern Front where Second Continental Army Major General Herbert Charles Heitke was struggling to form the various militias under his command into a cohesive force. This disorganization allowed the Army of the Potomac under General McNair and the Army of the Delaware under General Bradley to launch their offensive to seize Philadelphia (though the majority of the latter was still bogged down fighting guerrillas and dealing with terrorist attacks in New England), coined Operation Rubicon, to go off without facing much resistance. The Army of the Potomac swung up from Maryland and Delaware, pushing through the old battlefield at Gettysburg that had last been a key point to save the country, while the Army of the Delaware crossed its namesake river, easily sweeping aside the disorganized Syndicalist militias, who were armed with rifles of various caliber (many of which were obsolete ones from the 19th century and thus were difficulty to supply) that stood guarding the bridges dividing Pennsylvania from New Jersey. Philadelphia was enveloped within two days, trapping the Syndicalist militia “O’Donnell Division” in the city along with the entire Second Continental Navy’s Atlantic Fleet, and cutting off the CSA from its benefactors abroad. The Armies of the Potomac and the Delaware began the siege of Philadelphia and the city was subjected to heavy artillery bombardment as Federal troops repeatedly tried to break the Syndicalist lines to capture what had been the capital of the United States during the Revolutionary War.
Pictured: The battle plan of the Army of the Potomac in Operation Rubicon, March, 1937.
Pictured: General Herbert Charles Heitke as a US Army officer, 1936.
Fearing his fleet would be caught at the docks and captured by Federal forces, CSA Admiral Hugh Mulzac ordered the SCN Atlantic Fleet out to sea in an attempt to cross the Atlantic to shelter in the Union of Britain. Awaiting him was Admiral William Halsey Jr. of the United States’ Navy with the USN Atlantic Fleet. On March 29th, 1937, the two navies clashed in the Battle of Delaware Bay. The USN Atlantic Fleet was made up of a single carrier, Halsey’s flagship the USS Constellation, four battleships, (the USS Colorado, West Virginia, Washington, and North Carolina), two cruisers, forty-six destroyers, and twenty-eight submarines, and was supported by a wing of land-based Douglas TBD-1 Devastator torpedo bombers. The SCN Atlantic Fleet lacked any carriers, though it did outnumber the USN fleet in battleships with five (the CNS Idaho, Mississippi, California, Indiana, and Montana) and in cruisers with seven. It was severely outmatched in destroyers with only nineteen, and submarines with only nine.
Pictured: Federal TBD-1 Devastator preparing to attack SCN Atlantic Fleet at the Battle of Delaware Bay, 1937.
At 0758 EST,a USN PBY-Catalina spotted the SCN Atlantic Fleet moving from Philadelphia Naval Yard into Delaware Bay and reported its movements to the USN Atlantic Fleet. Admiral Halsey Jr. radioed Naval Air Station Anacostia outside of Washington DC, where its wing of Devastators scrambled to intercept the Syndicalist Fleet. Halsey Jr. ordered his flagship, the USS Constellation, launch its own wing of Northrop BT dive bombers and Douglas SB2D-1 Devastator carrier-launched torpedo bombers while ordering his entire fleet to move to intercept. At 0833 EST, the carrier launched squadrons began their attack run on the SCN. USN BT dive bombers dove onto the cruisers and destroyers which formed a picket line in front of the battleships, scoring hits on three of the cruisers, sinking one (the CNS Charleston.) The second wave of carrier-launched Devastators followed up the attack, sinking two more cruisers (the CNS Chattanooga and the CNS Constitution) as well as two destroyers while losing one plane in the attack. By 0847, the land-based Devastators arrived on the scene and attacked the escort ships, sinking four more SCN destroyers and damaging another cruiser while only losing one plane before returning to NAS Anacostia to refuel and rearm.
Pictured: Federal BT Dive Bombers over Atlantic City during the Battle of Delaware Bay, 1937.
Pictured: The USS Constellation before the Battle of Delaware Bay, 1937.
As the SCN Atlantic Fleet approached the entrance of the bay, they found the USN Atlantic fleet blockading them in. Admiral Mulzac ordered his battered fleet to prepare to engage when the USN battleships fired upon it. The volley scored hits on the CNS Idaho and CNS Mississippi damaging both and knocking out their forward guns. Three more SCN destroyers were sunk, bringing the total number of lost Syndicalist destroyers at eight at that point. The SCN Atlantic Fleet swung into position and returned fire. Both Federal cruisers, the USS Memphis and the USS Woodrow Wilson were struck, with the former’s magazine detonating, sending a massive explosion into the air which could be heard as far away as New York City and Washington DC. The Woodrow Wilson, though damaged, was able to retreat to port as the battle continued. Despite the loss of the Memphis, the battle was going very much in favor of the USN.
The SCN had a contingent of USN sailors who had defected when the CSA had seceded, but the majority of its ships’ crews were untrained fishermen, dock workers, and merchantmen who had enlisted in the SCN in the month before the war began and had next to no training. Their gunnery skills were lacking compared to their USN counterparts, who were quickly knocking out more and more SCN destroyers, and beating up on the surviving cruisers and battleships. Admiral Mulzac, realizing that his entire fleet, with all hands, would likely be lost if he continued the battle, sounded the retreat at 1015 EST. By the time his fleet made it back to Philadelphia, he had lost all nineteen of his destroyers, and three of his seven cruisers. All five battleships were damaged (the CNS Idaho barely made it back to port and sunk soon after it made it to dock.) The only ships in the SCN Atlantic Fleet that had made it out of Delaware Bay had been his nine submarines under the command of Rear Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, which would survive for a few months out at sea, harassing Federal merchantmen and resupply with the help of Syndicalist sympathizers along the New Jersey and New England Coast before they were ultimately hunted down by Federal destroyers and aircraft. The United States Navy, in contrast, lost only one cruiser and two planes. It was a stunning victory for the weakened USN, and Admiral Halsey Jr. was invited to meet with President Olson as a hero of the United States, where he was proclaimed to be the greatest American naval officer since Admiral Farragut during the First American Civil War.
Pictured: Graphic Depicting the losses of both sides of the Battle of Delaware Bay, March 29th, 1937.
Throughout the rest of the day of March 29th, Federal forces from the Armies of the Potomac and the Delaware continued to press their advance on Philadelphia. Admiral Mulzac realized the SCN Atlantic Fleet would soon fall into Federal hands, so he ordered it scuttled. The Syndicalist O’Donnell Division was overwhelmed shortly before nightfall and advanced elements of the 3rd Infantry Division under the command of the recently demoted Dwight D. Eisenhower entered the city center to find the SCN Atlantic Fleet at the bottom of the Delaware River blocking off Philadelphia’s access to the sea. Eisenhower was seen as a national hero for his actions in Philadelphia, and due to photographer Robert Capa capturing the famous photo of him during the liberation of the hallowed ground at Gettysburg where Eisenhower had led a training camp before the war. His successes and fame, along with testimony from General Marshall that Eisenhower was loyal to the Republic, led to President Olson reconsidering the demotion he had given Eisenhower for his proximity to the MacArthur Plot.
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Pictured: Eisenhower at Gettysburg, March, 1937.
With the fall of Philadelphia, the Second Continental Navy would effectively be wiped out on the Atlantic for the rest of the war, and the majority of its Atlantic Fleet’s sailors would surrender in Philadelphia (though Rear Admiral Arleigh Burke managed to slip past Federal lines through the Schuylkill River on rowboats with over five hundred sailors that night, moving up the river to Reading Pennsylvania, a trip of nearly fifty miles (eighty kilometers), a daring endeavor which would get him promoted to Admiral and turn him into a hero of the CSA. He and the sailors he escaped with would continue fighting for the Second Continental Navy on the rivers and Great Lakes of the Eastern United States for the rest of the war. Philadelphia had been conquered in a great blow to the CSA, though the loss of the city gave Heitke the justification he needed to whip the Federalist (Radical Socialist) units into line and by April 1st, he had blunted the Army of the Potomac’s advance on Harrisburg; established a defensive line along the Appalachians and the New York border, and had managed to seize Hagerstown, Maryland, and Saltville, Virginia, giving the CSA a line of control stretching from the New York-Pennsylvania border, down to the Virginia-Kentucky Border.
Pictured: CSA Frontline stabilizes, April, 1937.
The same day that Operation Rubicon began on the East Coast, the Army of the Mississippi under General Truscott launched its offensive into Minnesota, crossing the Red River from the Dakotas while simultaneously driving North from Iowa towards Minneapolis, in what was coined Operation Little Crow. Similarly, to the Eastern Front, the Syndicalists were disorganized and ill-prepared for the Federal offensive. With most of the Army of the Mississippi being on foot, (it only had a few cavalry divisions and only one hundred trucks that were mostly used for towing artillery or carrying supplies), it slowly advanced through Minnesota, taking Minneapolis on April 1st, and St. Paul on April 2nd, 1937 with little resistance. Despite the slow pace of the advance it appeared the Army of the Mississippi would reach Duluth on the shores of Lake Superior within a week. Unlike on the Eastern Front however, where General Heitke had experienced difficulties getting the various Syndicalist factions to work together and struggled to launch any serious counter offensives, the Western Front was commanded by Major General Smedley Butler. Butler was an experienced officer and a war hero who had served in the Spanish-American War, the Philippines War, and the numerous “Banana Wars” that the US Marines had been involved in throughout the ‘20s and ‘30s. He had spent much of the Thirty Day Deadline period training and organizing the Red Guards and other Syndicalist units into a serious fighting force, and he was quick to react. He mobilized Red Guard units in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, conscripted taxis and trains, and rushed them to the front. By April 3rd, the Army of the Mississippi’s offensive ground to a halt on the banks of the Mississippi River to the South, and at the Saint Louis River to the North as they encountered entrenched Red Guard divisions. With the Federal Offensives in the Eastern and Western Fronts halted, Butler realized the need for a total overhaul of the Second Continental Army.
Pictured: The battle plan of the Army of the Mississippi in Operation Little Crow, March, 1937.
Pictured: The Front line of the Minnesota Front, March 31st, 1937.
Butler divided the entire Second Continental Army into seven separate armies. The First Army under the command of General George H. Cannon would be located along the St. Louis River and Mississippi River from the Canadian Border down to the Southern border of Minnesota. The Second Army under the Command of General Evans Fordyce Carlson would form up along the banks of the Mississippi River along the Iowa-Illinois border down to the Southern tip of Illinois. The Third Army under the command of General Maurice Rose would form up on the Northern banks of the Ohio River on the border of Indiana and Western Kentucky, and would be the spearhead in the attempt to split the United States in two and bring the fight to the AUS. General Rose was a close friend of Butler and had held a personal grudge against the Longist General George Van Horn Moseley due to Moseley’s vicious anti-Semitism. General Rose had been eager to fight the AUS since the start of the Thirty Day Deadline and Butler had rewarded him with a command that he had hoped would make that possible. The First, Second, and Third Armies would be directly under the command of Butler himself as part of the Western Front.
Pictured: General Smedley Butler as a US Marine, 1936.
The Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth would be under the command of General Heike as part of the Eastern Front. The Fourth Army under the command of General Oliver Law, would form up on the Ohio River on the border between Eastern Kentucky and Ohio, and would participate in the coming offensive to split the United States in two. The Fifth Army under the command of General Milton Wolff, a Centralist (Totalist) who would command the Second Continental Army in West Virginia. The Sixth Army under the command of General John Tisa would hold Pennsylvania against the Army of the Potomac and the Army of the Delaware. The final army, the Seventh Army under the command of General Robert Hale Merriman, would be held in reserve to watch the border in the event of a Canadian intervention and to deal with Longist or Loyalist partisans.
In the South, Major General George S. Patton Jr. had been given command of AUS forces in the Western Theatre, while Major General George Van Horn Moseley had command of the Eastern Theatre. A third group of mostly militia, under Major General Jacob L. Devers, would guard the interior and the Southern Coastline. Just as the Confederacy had organized its armies based on States, so too did the AUS. Patton’s forces, called Army Group West, were composed of three armies at the start of the war. The first army was the Army of Texas, under the command of General Walton Walker, and was formed up from the mouth of the Guadalupe River to the New Mexico border, and up to the Oklahoma Panhandle. The Army of Texas planned to swing South to crush the Texan loyalists, and push into New Mexico to take the state for the AUS. The second army was the Army of Oklahoma, under the command of General Courtney Hicks Hodges, which lined the border of Oklahoma and Kansas. The Army of Oklahoma was part of Patton’s plan, Operation Lightning Strike, to rapidly move up through the Great Plains then swing West to take Denver. The third and final army was the Army of Arkansas, under the command of General Joseph Lawton Collins, which was formed on the border of Arkansas and Missouri. The Army of Arkansas was tasked with taking Missouri to cut the United States in half as a part of Operation Lightning Strike, then driving up towards Chicago to strike the CSA a crippling blow.
Pictured: General Patton personally overseeing the Army of Oklahoma's offensive into Kansas.
General Moseley’s Army Group East was likewise divided into three armies. The Army of Tennessee under the command of General Clifton B. Cates formed along the Western border of Kentucky and Tennessee, and planned to attack North to Louisville and the Ohio River, putting a natural border between the AUS and the heart of the CSA. The second army was the Army of Georgia under the command of the ruthless and vicious General Pedro del Valle. General del Valle was especially eager to crush Syndicalists and had requested a command that would put him close to the CSA. The Army of Georgia would form up on the Western border of Kentucky and Tennessee, and also drive North into Kentucky and West Virginia to cut off Washington DC from the Western US, and to push the CSA back from their Southern salient along the Big Sandy River. The third and final Army was the Army of North Carolina under the command of General Matthew Ridgeway. The Army of North Carolina would attempt to retake Virginia, General Ridgeway’s native state, and capture Washington DC if possible.
Pictured: General Moseley, 1937.
The rest of the ground forces of the AUS under the command of General Devers, mostly made up of Minutemen regiments, would hunt Loyalist and Syndicalist Partisans in the interior of the AUS while watching the coast for possible Federal landings.
With the outbreak of war on March 22nd, the forces of the AUS wasted no time launching an all-out attack on the dug in Federal troops that lined their borders. The Army of Texas poured into the breakaway Southern section of its namesake state and routed the hastily prepared Federal formations of Loyalist National Guard, Tejano militias, and Border Patrol units who pulled back to El Paso to escape the relentless assault of the Longists. With the fall of Galveston on March 31st, all of Loyalist Texas East of the Pecos river had fallen to the Army of Texas, while surviving Federal units reformed with the Army of the Colorado to defend New Mexico and the last bastion of what the Loyalists called “Free Texas.”
Pictured: Federal Loyalists' doomed defense of Galveston, Texas, March, 1937.
Pictured: The New Mexico Front after the Fall of Southern Texas, March, 1937.
The Army of Oklahoma began its offensive on March 22nd as well and rapidly pushed North through the thin Federal lines on the Kansas border. Dodge City, Wichita, and Independence, Kansas all fell to the Army of Oklahoma by April 1st, and Federal troops were driven back to the Northern bank of the Smoky Hill River where they would be reorganized as part of the Army of the Colorado which was now dangerously overextended from Western Texas to Northern Kansas.
Pictured: Operation Lightning Strike in Kansas, March, 1937.
The Army of Arkansas had less success than its sister armies during its invasion of Missouri. Although Federal troops in Missouri were spread thin like their counterparts in Kansas, the Army of Arkansas was plagued with supply line problems and guerrilla activity that hampered its advance. Nevertheless, on March 30th, the Army of Arkansas entered Springfield, Missouri, finding it abandoned by Federal forces who had retreated North to the Sac River to reform their defensive line. In East Missouri, the Army of Arkansas advanced along the Mississippi River all the way up to the Meramec River on the outskirts of St. Louis before they were stopped by the entrenched 35th Infantry Division of the Missouri National Guard at the Southern flank of the Army of the Mississippi.
Pictured: AUS and CSA invasions of Missouri and Kentucky, March, 1937.
Army Group East’s invasion of Kentucky and Virginia suffered similar difficulties. The Federal government had considered Kentucky indefensible in
War Plan Blue and called for a total evacuation towards Virginia. Despite the call to withdraw, Loyalist guerrillas, determined to defend their state, sabotaged bridges and rail lines throughout Southern Kentucky to slow the Longist advance as Federal forces and Kentucky National Guard units pulled out to join the Army of the Potomac in Virginia (including a daring and risky plan to evacuate the US’s gold reserves from Fort Knox by air), delaying the Army of Tennessee and the Army of Georgia as their two-pronged offensive slowly progressed through the state. In the face of these difficulties, the Army of Tennessee managed to advance as far as the Green River by April 1st. The Army of Georgia, on the other hand, only managed to capture Middlesboro and Williamsburg in the same amount of time due to General del Valle’s determination to spend his efforts brutally hunting guerrillas with his Silver Legionnaire divisions, an action which would earn him the title “the Butcher of the Cumberland,” and further intensify Loyalist resistance in Eastern Kentucky.
Pictured: General del Valle analyzes a map of the Appalachians in Kentucky to search for Loyalist partisans.
The Army of North Carolina, unlike its counterparts in Kentucky, went up against a well-entrenched and professional opponent in Southern Virginia. The Army of the Potomac’s southern flank had dug in along the banks of the Appomattox River, leaving a detachment of Virginia National Guard to defend Norfolk. Norfolk, with its strategic naval base, was a top priority for the Army of North Carolina, and General Ridgeway was determined to take it at all costs. With the Army of the Potomac’s USAAC wings participating in the attack on Philadelphia, AUS air wings had near total air superiority and bombed Norfolk unchecked for over a week, pulverizing defensive positions in and around the beleaguered city. Rebel artillery batteries unleashed heavy fire onto Norfolk as well, devastating the city’s garrison and forcing it to withdraw by sea when the city was cut off to the North on March 27th. March 28th, 1937, the city fell when North Carolina State Defense Militia entered the city unopposed. General Ridgeway continued his advance along the Virginia coast, with forward elements of the Army of North Carolina reaching the Army of the Potomac’s defensive line around the town of Petersburg on April 3rd, in a reverse of the Siege of Petersburg during the First Civil War, when Federal forces had besieged the city which had been defended by Southern troops. Fierce fighting broke out along the outskirts of the town, but the Virginia National Guard’s 29th “Blue and the Gray” Division defending the perimeter held its ground despite the enemy’s overwhelming air superiority and heavy bombardment. By April 4th, the Army of North Carolina, with its nose bloodied, pulled back from Petersburg, called off its offensive into Virginia and reorganized for a future offensive. General Ridgeway’s dream of quickly retaking his home state, and his hope of even taking Washington DC had been shattered.
Pictured: Norfolk, Virginia after its fall to the Army of North Carolina, April, 1937.
Pictured: The Virginia Front, April, 1937.
The Federal government, though suffering the loss of an important naval base in Virginia, and still reeling from the rapid and nearly unopposed Southern invasions of Kansas, Missouri, and Kentucky had bloodied both of its enemies in key victories during the first two weeks of the war providing the public with a morale boost and giving them a rallying cry to defend the Republic.
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